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Ontario’s finance minister Charles Sousa told you there were no new taxes in his recent budget, but one man’s no new tax is another man’s user fee.

While for most of us the distinction between the two is lost, for the government a fee is not a tax. A fee recovers all or part of the costs of providing a service, according to the Ontario Auditor General. A tax is collected to produce revenues for general government purposes and for things the government deems to be “public good.”

The province raises $2 billion a year from fees and, like the banks, it wants more. The banks are squeezed by low interest rates and the need to increase profits and boost dividends. With the province, the momentum comes from an ambitious transit plan, a coming provincial pension scheme, rising health costs and the need to make up for money squandered elsewhere — things like power plants that won’t be built.

What both have in common is that you’ll have to pay. The difference is that when your bank starts squeezing, you can go somewhere else — a credit union, PC Financial or Tangerine, for example. When the province does it, you have nowhere else to go.

According to the Ontario budget documents, all 400 fees collected by the province are under review. The goal is full “cost recovery,” the extent of which will be unveiled in next year’s budget. Expect things to be inflation-indexed at the very least and, depending on what the review finds, fees could go up a good deal more than that.

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User fees hit the front page in June 2013, when provincial Progressive Conservative Party leader Tim Hudak got hold of an eight-page Treasury Board planning document that outlined how the Liberals could raise $270 million a year, or 13.5 per cent more, by increasing user fees.

According to the list that Hudak read out in the legislature, here’s what was being considered:

More for driver licenses and license plate renewals;

More for fishing and hunting licenses;

Paying more to camp at provincial parks;

More for special liquor license permits, often used for charity events;

A $20 surcharge on speeding tickets;

“Pay for stay” system in jails, where inmates pay for such things as soap, shampoo and other personal items;

More red light cameras, which Sousa quickly denied would happen at the time;

An “in-person” service charge at Service Ontario offices;

A monthly surcharge of 75 cents on phone bills to cover the cost of 911 services;

New family court fees;

Introducing fees for justice of the peace services, which are currently free;

Higher Drive Clean fees, currently $30, plus tax for cars.

At the time, Sousa said the proposals in the documents were just ideas, nothing more.

While the Royal Bank’s fee increases announced last week were at least clear, Ontario’s auditor general concluded in a 2009 review that the province’s approach to user fees was a mess. Some fees were illegal, some hadn’t gone up in decades. Some didn’t reflect the cost of the services, and there didn’t seem to be any good measure of what they should cost.

The auditor’s report also found ministries had different approaches to reviewing the prices and fees chosen, and that charges applied were done in secret. Though the public had a right to know these things, they only found out when they paid at the Service Ontario kiosk. The auditor urged more transparency.

A spokesman for the Treasury Board Secretariat didn’t elaborate much on the budget, saying a review of all fees including those for licenses, vehicle fees and hazardous waste and family court fees will soon be under way. It will report back in the 2016 budget with a multi-year plan that will include indexing and cost recovery of services.

There was nothing about consultation or transparency, but why wait to be asked? If you have something to say, now is the time. A year from now it will be too late.

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